Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 08:20:55 -0700 (MST)
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-econ.utah.edu>
Subject: Dr, Da, De



Dear Seminar:

Thank you, Victor, for re-formulating Bhaskar's argument
exactly in the way I had asked for.  Let's look at Victor's
argument:


> I, a scientist, will isolate certain aspects of
> reality/nature in order to understand it better.  The
> way I arrange  the experiment and thus the causal
> order of the results  may depend on me.  The
> conditions of this 'isolated' experiment depend upon
> how i realize/actualize the experiment.  

> The results of the experiment, however, are  not
> determined by me and, let's say, my will.


This is very important.  The experimenter sets up a
complicated experiment, in order to get an outcome which is
*not* determined by him.  For instance, he creates a vacuum,
and then he lets a stone and a feather fall down and
observes that both fall at the same speed.  I.e., he
establishes a constant conjunction which we cannot observe
in real life.  In real life, stones fall much faster than
feathers, and each feather falls with a different speed.  In
the experiment they fall at the same speed.  But the speed
with which they fall (I should say acceleration but you know
what I mean) is not determined by the experimenter.  On the
contrary, the experiment must be reproducible, i.e., someone
else across the world should be able to set up the same
experiment and again get the same outcome.  (And there the
acceleration may be slightly different because the gravity
and the centrifugal force from the rotation of the earth may
be different.)  I.e., the outcome is not determined by
either one of the scientists themselves, but by other
factors independent of the scientists.

In Dialectic (DPF), Bhaskar emphasizes the concept of
*absence* and says that his earlier works had been written
from a point of view where he was still unaware of the
importance of absence.  The experiment is an example for
this: it is an important case of absenting, but RB does not
say it in these terms in RTS (but he says it somewhere in
DPF).  The experimenter absents the influence of any natural
confounding factors on the outcome of his experiment (here
the resistance of the air), and he also absents the effects
of his own influence.

Well, let's say it this way: there is a contradiction going
on.  On the one hand, the experimenter creates a constant
conjunction of events which would not have happened without
his intervention into the natural course of events.  On the
other hand, the cannot determine which constant conjunction
is going to happen; he only knows, or expects, that some
constant conjunction is going to happen.  By making the
vacuum very good and measuring very accurately he can
ascertain that all objects fall with the same speed, but he
cannot influence which speed they fall at, because this
depends on the magnitude of the force of gravity.  This is a
constant which is independent of the experimenter.  Victor
says it well: the experimenter can manipulate nature, but he
is not a god who can tell nature what to do.

I think this is what RB means with the sentence:

> It is a condition of the intelligibility of experimental
> activity that in an experiment the experimenter is a
> causal agent of a sequence of events but not of the causal
> law which the sequence of events enables him to identify.

Now Bhaskar's next sentence is:

> This suggests that there is a ontological distinction
> between scientific laws and patterns of events.

How does this follow?  Can someone make this more explicit?
There is one more important aspect to take into consideration
here.  As Matthew wrote:

> more importantly that the findings from experimentation
> (closed systems) can often be applied to open systems with
> some degree of confidence and intelligibility.

Matthew's account was excellent, but Matthew talked already
on a higher level, I want to really get into the nitty
gritties of the very basic argument.  Can someone continue
from here: how does everything that was just said about the
experiment lead to the conclusion that reality is stratified
into real, actual, and empirical?


Hans.


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